Background

Definition

Open Access in scholarly literature means "immediate, free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software or use them for any other lawful purpose..."
(Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Colatition (SPARC), http://www.arl.org/sparc/openaccess/)

While this study indicates that 23.5% of the refereed literature published in physics and astronomy in 2008 was available through Green (20.5%) or Gold OA (3.0%), a brief study carried out by the ESO library in June 2012 shows a different picture. Using the NASA ADS Abstract Service, we inspected 785 articles published in January 2012 in the journals A&A, AJ, ApJ/ApJS, MNRAS, and PASP. We found that 25 (or 3%) of these papers were available freely on publishers' websites (mostly A&A Letters), 643 (or 82%) could be retrieved from the arXiv/astro-ph eprint server. In total, 85% of these papers were available through Green or Gold OA.

Conventional Publishing Model vs. Open Access Model ('Gold OA')

The following is a schematic overview of the conventional versus the Open Access publishing model ('Gold OA'). In the Conventional Model, authors achieve research results and prepare their manuscripts. Typically, the copyright has to be signed over to the publishers. The manuscripts are usually submitted to so-called legacy journals which have been active in astronomy for a long time and which provide a number of services, including pre-publication peer-review be international referees, copy-editing, distribution (e.g., making sure that the electronic version gets indexed by important search engines), recognition (for instance through measures like the Journal Impact Factor or through the reputation these journals have achieved among the astronomy community), and archiving/preservation. Access is based on subscriptions which provide immediate access. In addition, special forms of open access may apply, for instance delayed OA (in astronomy, core journals become available to all users after 1, 2, or 3 years), partial OA (e.g., certain section sof A&A), or through Green OA in case authors deposit their manuscripts on subject-based or institutional repositories. While the whole publishing model (conventional as well as OA) involves many hidden costs, the most visible costs in the conventional model are the subscription fees, together with pages charges, if they apply.

In the Gold OA model, authors typically retain the right to further use their manuscripts. Often a CC (Creative Commons) license is applied which governs for which purposes the paper can be used by the authors and by others. In theory, open access journals should provide the same service and quality we know from legacy journals; however, in practice unfortunately this is not always the case. Especially peer-review and recognition cause problems. Depending on the publisher, peer-review might happen on a rather regional level only instead of by an international team of referees. Recognition is often measured through the impact factor, but in order to be included in this ranking, journals have to pass a quality control by the providers of the impact factor platform (Thomson Reuters). We will come back to these issues later.

As mentioned before, access is then provided free of charge (to the reader) for everyone. The direct costs apply now at a different stage: in order to publish their manuscripts, authors are required to pay a fee. A shift has taken place from the readers-pay to the authors-pay model.

For more information on (1) and (2) see the Section on "Issues with (some) OA publishers" below.

Why is the OA model attractive for publishers?

OA is ‘en vogue’: OA advocates, librarians, scientists have created a lot of attention; access seems to be more important than all other publishing issues
(actual costs, authenticity, quality, ethics, preservation, sustainability...)

'Predatory publishers'

Jeffrey Beall, librarian at the University of Colorado, coined the term 'predatory publishers' and defines them as "... those that unprofessionally exploit the author-pays model of open-access publishing (Gold OA) for their own profit."

Characteristics of predatory publishers include

spam sent to professional email lists to solicit articles and editors

'vanity presses' with basically no rejections and large numbers of journal titles in their portfolio

Note: An interview with Jeffrey Beall can be found in the 13 Sept 2012 issue of Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-publishers-are-corrupting-open-access-1.11385. Beall explains how predatory publishers are corrupting the entire scholarly publication system by misusing the author-pays model of open access. He argues that also honest authors who publish in OA journals are damaged in an unethical environment that is polluted by plagiarism, lack of quality control, and unsound publishing methodologies. Beall suggests that despite the pressure to publish, authors should resist the temptation to publish with predatory publishers, and librarians shouldn't list their publications in their catalogs.

The case of A&A

One may be tempted to ask why we need open access at all in Europe since we have A&A? Let's first take a look at how A&A is currently organized:

A&A is published by EDP Sciences on behalf of European astronomers (+ Argentina, Brazil, Chile, ESO), run by the Board of Directors

member states contribute according to their gross national products

authors from member states publish without page charges

substantial income is secured through subscription fees

all articles are made available through delayed OA (currently after 3 years), immediate OA exists for certain sections (Letters, Instrumentation, a.o.)

If A&A were moved to full OA, there would be no income from subscriptions, and one could expect and increase of author fees and/or member state contributions. However, the general advantages of open access publishing would be available for the first time in the existence of A&A.

accelerated and free access to all articles for the entire astronomy community

increased visibility, perhaps also increased impact

authors retain copyright

preservation and archiving are taken care off by the publisher

Conclusions

OA publishing can be a good thing

There are no easy criteria to judge the quality of a journal/publisher

Crucial issues like actual costs, authenticity, quality, ethics, preservation, sustainability should be considered

Be aware that there are predatory publishers

In astronomy, a de facto Open Access situation can be achieved (for core journals) through 'Green OA' (with known issues!)

Gold OA brings advantages that cannot be achieved otherwise

In case you would like to discuss open access publishing in more detail, please stop by the Library office at any time or contact us at library@eso.org.